News

RATS Practice Rescue in Cold Snowing Conditions

7/07/08

Saturday the 5th of July brought cold weather to most of New Zealand and having once already postponed an Incline Rescue exercise James decided to get it out of the way. Geoff was given the task of organizing the team at our base in Sockburn while James went up onto the Summit Road above Sumner with his casualties and to meet Graham from the dog team.

On arrival at the Summit Road snow was falling lightly but was coming in horizontal with the wind. Because of this we decided not to place the casualties until the rest of the team arrived.

The team arrived at 1015 with the weather conditions worsening. James and Graham went and placed our casualties. Andrea and Rachel were place together about 50m down the slope while Sean was further down the slope. While this was being done Geoff got the team setting up a picket anchor system and some lines so they could locate and assess the casualties. Sharon and Bronwyn were sent down first and located Andrea and Rachel quickly. They reported back that another casualty, Sean, was not with them and requested Graham and his dog, Tala, to search for Sean.

Graham, Tala, and Christelle were tasked to search for Sean and they found him with in about 10 minutes of leaving the roadside. While searching for Sean the rest of the team took a basket stretcher down to Andrea who had a simulated broken femur. They quickly packaged her in the stretcher and got the stretcher ready to be carried to the roadside with a rescue line providing pull as required to help lift the stretcher over steeper terrain. Rachel was walked up the hill before the stretcher carry was initiated because she was getting cold and we wanted to prevent any chance of exposure.

The roadside team used our Rescue Mate 4:1 hauling system to help with getting the stretcher back to the road.

From beginning to end the exercise took just over one hour to complete after the team had arrived at the roadside. Considering the weather conditions this was a great effort by the team. Although we tend not to train in poor conditions this exercise proved to ourselves that we can do it when we need to.